| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: knees beside the Lone Wolf.
"Said I not it would be my last fight?" Akela gasped. "It is
good hunting. And thou, Little Brother?"
"I live, having killed many."
"Even so. I die, and I would--I would die by thee,
Little Brother."
Mowgli took the terrible scarred head on his knees, and put his
arms round the torn neck.
"It is long since the old days of Shere Khan, and a Man-cub that
rolled naked in the dust."
"Nay, nay, I am a wolf. I am of one skin with the Free People,"
The Second Jungle Book |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: taking up the head of Crassus, and acting the part of a bacchante
in her frenzy, in a rapturous impassioned manner, sang the lyric
passages,
We've hunted down a mighty chase to-day,
And from the mountain bring the noble prey;
to the great delight of all the company; but when the verses of
the dialogue followed,
What happy hand the glorious victim slew?
I claim that honor to my courage due;
Pomaxathres, who happened to be there at the supper, started up
and would have got the head into his own hands, "for it is my
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: Caleb had pushed his chair back, and was leaning forward, shaking his
head slowly, and fitting his finger-tips together with much nicety.
"Poor Mary!" he said. "Susan," he went on in a lowered tone,
"I'm afraid she may be fond of Fred."
"Oh no! She always laughs at him; and he is not likely to think
of her in any other than a brotherly way."
Caleb made no rejoinder, but presently lowered his spectacles,
drew up his chair to the desk, and said, "Deuce take the bill--
I wish it was at Hanover! These things are a sad interruption
to business!"
The first part of this speech comprised his whole store of maledictory
Middlemarch |
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: been perceived by you through the bodily organs? or rather, is not the
nearest approach to the knowledge of their several natures made by him who
so orders his intellectual vision as to have the most exact conception of
the essence of each thing which he considers?
Certainly.
And he attains to the purest knowledge of them who goes to each with the
mind alone, not introducing or intruding in the act of thought sight or any
other sense together with reason, but with the very light of the mind in
her own clearness searches into the very truth of each; he who has got rid,
as far as he can, of eyes and ears and, so to speak, of the whole body,
these being in his opinion distracting elements which when they infect the
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